1. Field of the Invention.
The present invention is directed to an information search and retrieval system which will both search and provide return retrieval information in a text based format via the indexing of data through a geographical coordinate system.
2. Prior Art.
Computerized searching for relevant, specific information in a large body of unstructured text is necessarily a less efficient process than searching for such information in a structured file or database. One contributor to such search inefficiency is the fact that a word in the English language (or any other language) may carry several unrelated meanings. The context or expression within which any word occurs usually makes it clear to the average reader which meaning, among several alternatives, is appropriate. For example, it may not even occur to the reader of a paragraph dealing with wood shaping tools such as augers, chisels and planes, that the word planes could mean aircraft.
Another, perhaps greater difficulty for computerized text search and retrieval is that search arguments and responses often contain proper nouns. Whereas language dictionaries may help resolve ambiguities of common nouns, they typically provide little or no help in disambiguating proper nouns (names). Book publishers typically employ editors and make them responsible for compiling indexes to scholarly publications. Out of necessity, these editors must be sufficiently educated in the subject of the publication in order to resolve ambiguous names included in the index. For example, a book on British history might contain several references to Churchill. The compiler of the index would then be obligated to create a separate entry for each "distinct" individual named Churchill, and further include reference pointers to all appropriate pages containing information relating to such individual entries.
An even more pronounced difficulty is realized in the instance of place names. A compiler of an index to a book might discriminate between multiple locations sharing the same name, by adding distinguishing attributes such as county, state or country. A reader of a book about the American Mid-West seeking information about "Springfield" would likely discover that there are cities of that name in Illinois, Missouri and Ohio, thanks to the efforts of the index compiler. However, a search for information about Springfield in a loosely defined body of text or a database such as the World Wide Web has no such support from an index. Using any one of the currently available Internet search tools, the user is faced with a serious deficiency, as a search for Springfield will retrieve all documents from the World Wide Web containing that proper noun, irrespective of the city to which the "searcher" meaningfully refers. The searcher or user might then constrain the search somewhat by using additional search arguments such as `"Springfield MO" OR "Springfield Missouri"`. The retrieved, revised results would then relate to the intended Springfield. However, in this instance the search would have then ignored all other documents containing the simple unqualified name Springfield--even if such references were directed towards the intended Springfield. Typically, the scope of any document sets the context for the use of place names within it, and so a listing of, say, all the travel agents in Missouri would use their city names without any State qualification.
The problem becomes even more significant should the user wish to retrieve documents containing information about places within, and restricted to, a specific area. For example, if the user wants to learn about Bed & Breakfast establishments in California's Napa Valley, many highly relevant documents might not contain the phrase "Napa Valley". Instead, they might very well contain and refer to a city within California's Napa Valley. `St. Helena,` serves as an example of such a city. In today's "unlimited access to unlimited information" environment, a competent search engine must be able to discriminate and comprehend the geographical limits of any given area, and retrieve all relevant documents satisfying search arguments within that area. In this example, a competent search engine would find and return all documents describing Bed and Breakfast establishments in Napa Valley's Saint Helena, but ignore any such documents relating to the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic.
All of these problems are exacerbated by the growth of computer networks including the World Wide Web which is a large network of networks, all interconnected.
The present invention provides a means of resolving all existing search and retrieval deficiencies noted above by means of enhanced database index processing.
Though various navigation systems have been used in the past (for example, see Nimura U.S. Pat. No. 5,231,584) they are not capable of indexing documents from a variety of sources in a coordinates system for later reference and retrieval.
Also in the past, various digital mapping systems have been provided, which may include a location index. Lamoure (U.S. Pat. No. 5,329,108) shows one such example. Nevertheless, none of the prior art mapping systems provide an indexing system for searching and retrieval of multiple documents based on coordinates indexing.